One agent began to escort me through the machine, where I assumed falsely that I could just walk straight through. When she realized I was an “opt out”, she escorted me back through. It was then that I let her know of my concern for my materials and I’d appreciate the opportunity to watch over them. Her exact words back to me: “No, no you can’t watch your stuff. You need to go back over there.”

Like Matt, I always opt out of the nudie photo makers at the airport. My experience varies from airport to airport, but more often than not I’m greeted with scowls and “are you sure you want to do that?” While I’m worried about the health issues (it says a lot that the TSA won’t let anyone test them!), it’s my small way of protesting the security theater that inconveniences everyone without making us any safer.

The fact that they don’t let you watch your items while you are waiting for a pat down is unbelievable. Hearing Matt’s story reminded me of the time I walked through for my pat down just in time to catch someone “accidentally” walking away with my brand new mac book air. He apologized and handed it back, but if TSA had kept me waiting even 30 seconds longer it would have been gone.

TSA is a joke and people need to start speaking up if we want things to change.

by Josh Fraser on May 24, 2012

I’ve been a long time fan and reader of High Scalability, a blog about building bigger, faster, more reliable websites. It's a great resource for anyone who cares about building websites at scale.
Yesterday, I had the privilege of writing a guest ...

by Josh Fraser on April 27, 2012

This week at Torbit we launched a new product called Torbit Insight. It's a real user measurement tool that let's you see how fast your site is loading for every visitor on every page. There's nothing else like it on the market and it's obviously resonating ...

by Josh Fraser on March 11, 2012

I just read The Caging of America by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker. It's an informative article about the sad state of affairs in America prisions. It's well known that we lock more people up in America than any other country. Blacks are incarcerated ...

by Josh Fraser on March 5, 2012

Like many of my friends, I don't waste much time following what's going on in Washington. I'm disenchanted with the whole political system in the US and prefer to speed my attention on things I can actually change. It was only recently that I discovered ...

by Josh Fraser on January 16, 2012

Recently many large sites on the web, like Reddit and Wikipedia have announced plans to black out their sites in opposition to the bills that have been proposed in the US House and Senate in the name of "stopping piracy". The problem with these bills ...

by Josh Fraser on November 6, 2011

Bill Gates to members of the Harvard community:
I hope you will reflect on what you’ve done with your talent and energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you work to address the ...

by Josh Fraser on November 3, 2011

I was one of the small group of Google Reader users who actively used the sharing functionality before Google killed it with their latest upgrade. While the number of people I shared with was small, the quality was incredibly high. I don't blame Google ...

by Josh Fraser on September 28, 2011

One of the things I have greatly benefited from is being surrounded by good mentors. I was once advised to surround myself with people who are smarter than me (it's not a high bar, I know). Getting mentors involved in my life and company is one of ...

Hi. I'm Josh.

Entrepreneur, world traveler and rock climber. Co-founder and CTO of Forage.
Previous co-founder of Torbit and EventVue. This is my blog where I share what I'm learning about life, entrepreneurship and software development. read more »